Grieving Mom Humiliated While Making Returns At Babies ‘R’ Us

A Connecticut mother of three, Jessica Hunchko, was excited to finally be pregnant with her first boy.

“We pretty much had everything, but with car seats and strollers, you have to update them every five years,” said Huchko. The Mom purchased new ones at Babies “R” Us and threw out the receipt because she had no plans of returning them.

Sadly, Hunchko miscarried the baby, and found the “remainders of what should have been” too sad to look at and “needed them out of the house.”

She did not keep a receipt for the items, but the items were still in the box, untouched. She also used a credit card to pay for them as well as her store loyalty card. So one would think the returns would be no problem especially given the sad situation.

“I guess I didn’t give her a good enough answer, so she asked, ‘why are you returning this?’ And it triggered something inside of me, that a tear just rolled down my face and I had to just say, ‘my son passed away and I can’t use them’,” Huchko said.

A manager got involved, but that didn’t really help, as the items couldn’t be found in the system and the Mother was forced to explain the situation yet again. The manager was then able to track down the car seat, but Huchko said she was only able to get about half the price back.

“She turned around and said, ‘it’s coming up as two cents.” I said, ‘so you’re offering me two cents for a double stroller’,” Huchko said. “It was worse than a slap in the face. Now, I have to try and control myself while there’s a huge line forming behind me.”

Huchko reached out to her local news and to Babies “R” Us, and said the manager at the store vowed to make things right and give her a full refund.

“We are deeply sorry for her experience in our store, and more importantly for her loss. The store leadership has provided coaching to the team members to help ensure similar situations are handled with more care in the future,” the store said in a statement.

As for Huchko, she hopes that her experience will encourage change within the retail chain.

“Someone in my place, returning a product because of a loss of a child,” she said. “There is no policy, no employee training.”

Hopefully, her experience will help prevent that from happening again in the future.